For all that, there are those who never weary of trying to find where, in the misty mid-region of conjecture, the Masons got their immemorial emblems. One would think, after reading their endless essays, that the symbols of Masonry were loved and preserved by all the world--_except by the Masons themselves_. Often these writers imply, if they do not actually assert, that our order begged, borrowed, or cribbed its emblems from Kabbalists or Rosicrucians, whereas the truth is exactly the other way round--those impalpable fraternities, whose vague, fantastic thought was always seeking a local habitation and a body, making use of the symbols of Masonry the better to reach the minds of men. Why all this unnecessary mystery--not to say mystification--when the facts are so plain, written in records and carved in stone? While Kabbalists were contriving their curious cosmogonies, the Masons went about their work, leaving record of their symbols in deeds, not in creeds, albeit holding always to their simple faith, and hope, and duty--as in the lines left on an old brass Square, found in an ancient bridge near Limerick, bearing date of 1517: /P Strive to live with love and care Upon the Level, by the Square. P/ Some of our Masonic writers[104]--more than one likes to admit--have erred by confusing Freemasonry with Guild-masonry, to the discredit of the former. Even Oliver once concluded that the secrets of the working Masons of the Middle Ages were none other than the laws of Geometry--hence the letter _G_; forgetting, it would seem, that Geometry had mystical meanings for them long since lost to us. As well say that the philosophy of Pythagoras was repeating the Multiplication Table! Albert Pike held that we are "not warranted in assuming that, among Masons generally--in the _body_ of Masonry--the symbolism of Freemasonry is of earlier date then 1717."[105] Surely that is to err. If we had only the Mason's Marks that have come down to us, nothing else would be needed to prove it an error. Of course, for deeper minds all emblems have deeper meanings, and there may have been many Masons who did not fathom the symbolism of the order. No more do we; but the symbolism itself, of hoar antiquity, was certainly the common inheritance and treasure of the working Masons of the Lodges in England and Scotland before, indeed centuries before, the year 1717. II Therefore it is not strange that men of note and learning, attracted by the wealth of symbolism in Masonry, as well as by its spirit of fraternity--perhaps, also, by its secrecy--began at an early date to ask to be accepted as members of the order: hence _Accepted Masons_.[106] How far back the custom of admitting such men to the Lodges goes is not clear, but hints of it are discernible in the oldest documents of the order; and this whether or no we accept as historical the membership of Prince Edwin in the tenth century, of whom the _Regius Poem_ says, /$ Of speculatyfe he was a master. $/